Did you notice the hyphen in the name of this car? That's because Datsun's marketers wanted you to think about SEX when you thought about the North American version of the Nissan Silvia.

That approach made sense, because Datsun dealers were getting tired of all the lust-crazed car shoppers passing them by in favor of custom vans equipped with purple shag carpeting and airbrushed bongs that matched the paint job. Emphasizing the car's "SX appeal" shouldn't have been necessary, though, because the Mid-Malaise 200SX was a good-looking machine that offered decent performance for the time: 97 horsepower in a 2,300-pound, rear-wheel-drive car wasn't too bad by '77 standards.